


Thunderstruck

by Arukou



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual kind-of sort-of sex pollen?, Established Relationship, Identity Porn of a sorts, Implied Past Trauma, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Praise Kink, Sam and Steve are failing at communication a bit, Sam/Steve Gift Exchange 2016, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:43:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9287075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: Sam despises a warm house and after a brief and fierce thermostat war, Steve lets it go. Right up until he can't let it go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For [Clara](kafkasbro.tumblr.com) over on tumblr for the Sam/Steve Gift Exchange. I combined several of the prompts to get to generate this story: alternate universe (insomuch as there is a fantasy twist), fantasy, praise kink, misunderstandings, and "Sam is older than Steve." I hope you enjoy it!
> 
>  **Update:** Finally, finally betaed.

When Steve first moved in with Sam, they had a brief and fierce war over the thermostat. Steve hated the cold. He knew it was wasteful, keeping the heat so high, but he woke shivering at seventy-two degrees and if it was lower than sixty-six, his teeth started chattering like he had hypothermia. So he turned the temperature up and informed Sam he was happy to pay the extra on the heating bill. The problem was that Sam still turned it back down. In the winter he kept the house at a brisk sixty-eight and any time the outdoor temperature broke seventy-five, the AC was cranked to sixty-four.

For a while, their thermostat war was silent. Steve woke before Sam and fiddled with the temperature before he went for his run. When he got back, Sam was up and had switched it back. It was almost petty, certainly childish, the way they each waited until the other was out to flip the temperature switch. For months, back and forth back and forth it went and it was a wonder the heater and AC kept working at all with the way they pushed and pulled at it.

Finally, Sam confronted Steve over coffee. “You can always put on more layers. Hell, I’ll be your personal blanket if you want. But I can’t…I really can’t take the heat. Can you just…can we just…” Sam ran his hand over his face and looked down, his nose flaring.

“Can you tell me why?”

Sam fixed him with a pointed look and said, “Can you tell me how you’re doing knowing Bucky’s out there being hunted by the government?”

Steve clammed up and clenched his jaw.

“That’s what I thought. It’s not…it’s not easy for me to talk about it, ok? I just don’t want, I don’t want to get into right now.”

The corners of Sam’s eyes looked pinched, and the puckered corners of his mouth made him look like he was facing down a whole Hydra battalion. Steve suddenly felt like maybe he was being a bully, and he reached out unthinking, putting his fingers on Sam’s wrist. “Ok, Sam. Ok. I’ll keep the thermostat low. But I’ll take you up on that blanket offer.”

“Thanks, Steve,” Sam said, but his eyes were still pinched. He nodded, turned away, and pulled out an apple, chopping it with loud _thunks_ that echoed through the kitchen. Somehow, it made Steve feel like an even bigger bully.

As promised, that night Sam climbed into bed with Steve, draping himself as much like a blanket as humanly possible. Under heavy arms and the barest fuzz of Sam’s chest, Steve laughed. “That can’t possibly be comfortable.”

“It’s not. Sleeping on you is like sleeping on a damn slab of marble.”

“You can move off to the side if you want. It’s the thought that counts.”

Sam snorted and rolled a little until it was just his arm and leg flung over Steve, pulling him in tightly. They didn’t normally sleep like this. Hell, they didn’t even often share a bed. They’d kissed and they’d made love on the sofa and in the shower (and one particularly memorable time on the kitchen table), but Sam avoided sleeping next to Steve at night if he could help it, and even if they did sleep in the same bed, it was only side by side. Steve would’ve liked more, would’ve liked to wake up and see Sam’s face first thing in the morning, but he knew that he had hang-ups, that Sam had hang-ups, that they were both doing poorly at talking to each other about what it was they were doing together. This—having Sam draped over him, sharing body heat and breath—it was new, and he could feel tension in his muscles and in Sam’s too, but it was nice. Sam’s body was warm and grounding, just like a good down comforter, and once he managed to relax a little, Steve drifted off to the sound of Sam’s breathing and the beat of his heart.

In the dark of the night, when even in their busy DC neighborhood Steve could no longer hear cars passing, Sam woke with a jerk, scrambling out of bed and crouching on the ground in nothing but his boxers. Steve was just as quick to wake, though his slumber had been deep and dreamless. For a moment he was disoriented, the utter darkness of their bedroom taking him back to forests in Germany where they hadn’t dared shine a light for fear of bombers. Then he heard Sam’s labored breathing and squinted through the darkness over the side of the bed.

Sam was drenched with sweat, his eyes fixed on a distant point, only his fingertips and toes touching the ground as though he were preparing to start up a hundred-meter dash. The half of Steve that he’d been holding onto was uncomfortably clammy, and Steve realized he must’ve been sweating in his sleep. Even with super-soldier eyes, Steve could still only just barely see the flare of Sam’s nose, the heaving of his chest.

“Sam? Sam, you’re in Washington, D.C. Can you hear me? It’s 2:41 AM. It’s, uh, it’s a Wednesday. Sam?”

Quivering on his toes, Sam didn’t respond, didn’t even blink. After three more rattling breaths, he rose and left the room. Steve kicked the sheets off his knees and swung himself out of bed, staring down at where the comforter had been tossed sometime in the night. The house was freezing; how had Sam still found it too hot? Feeling like he was missing all the pieces, Steve went to the kitchen, where he found Sam standing in front of the freezer, an ice cube pressed to his forehead.

“You with me, Sam?”

In the glaring white light of the freezer, Sam bowed his head. “Yeah man. Yeah, I’m with you. Sorry about that.”

“You, uh, you want to talk about it?”

Sam’s head bowed lower and he braced one hand against the refrigerator handle. “I thought I’d be okay with the heat, but man, I just couldn’t…”

A light clicked on in Steve’s head. The heat. Desert. Bakhmala? Steve didn’t have the slightest clue if Bakhmala was a hot place, but he was guessing Sam’s aversion to heat might have something to do with what happened there.

“That’s okay, Sam. Do you, we can sit on the couch. Let you cool off.”

With a sigh, Sam closed the freezer and nodded, ice still pressed to his forehead, then his neck. The moved to the living room and Sam sat on the edge of the cushions, hunched forward like a bird prepared to take flight at a moment’s notice. Steve gathered the thick fleece throw they kept over the back and wrapped himself up in it. “Is it, has it got to do with Riley?”

The last thing he expected was a defeated laugh from Sam, but that’s what he got. “It’s…it’s got a lot to do with a lot of things. But yeah. Riley’s one thing.”

Steve nodded and looked toward the fireplace, which had never been lit in the six months he’d lived here, though he’d been tempted. Now it never would be lit. Not so long as Sam needed the cool air on his skin. Steve still wasn’t quite sure what they were to each other. Sam had given so much for Steve and Steve…he was starting to think he’d jump back in the Arctic Circle if Sam asked it. So an apartment at sixty-six. An empty bed. Steve would do that to, and maybe one day, Sam would talk about what exactly it was that made him shrink from hot days, hot weather, hot anything.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you need, your own little super soldier burrito.”

Sam snorted, something with more humor than self-deprecation, and glanced up through his fingers at Steve’s face.  “Man, if you’re a burrito, I’d better get a little taste of that meat. I’m betting it’s gone tough, but I’ll do my duty for my country.”

Torn between laughter and a sudden rush of lust, Steve snorted too and said, “Well, if you want the meat, you’ve gotta get through the tortilla.”

“This is gonna be some weird-ass sex,” Sam groused, poking for the edges of the blanket. His hands still trembled, but Steve didn’t think he was imagining the look of relief Sam was giving him through his eyelashes.

* * *

 

Living in the chilly apartment became second nature for Steve after that, and if he woke with the sound of cracking glaciers in his ears, Sam was almost always there somehow, kneeling at the side of Steve’s bed and waiting with worried eyes. Sometimes he would guiltily mention that they could turn up the thermostat, but Steve never asked him to. Cold became the norm and Steve stopped thinking of it as a strange thing. Right up until they fought the Enchantress.

She was no worse than Loki as opponents went. Better in some ways, because she didn’t have a giant alien army at her back. But she was fast and quick with her magic. Tony was puttering along on two jets, barely able to give them air support anymore. Natasha was hit, though she was hiding it well. Clint’s bow had been reduced to matchsticks, and while he’d requisitioned guns from the police, his ammunition was limited and Enchantress mostly seemed to find him annoying. Hulk had been reduced to the size of a house cat, and his tiny angry shouts still transmitted across their coms. Rhodey was faring better than Tony, mostly because he was flying less recklessly, but he wasn’t as maneuverable and Enchantress had given him several skeleton warriors to contend with. It was down to Steve, Sam, and Thor to bring her down and Thor wasn’t being particularly helpful.

“Amora, you need not follow the footsteps of my brother! There is still time to change your ways!”

“Is he always this optimistic?” Sam asked on the private channel.

“Seems like,” Steve grunted, batting away a flying chunk of rubble with the flat of the shield.

“You spurned me, you quibbling princeling! For a mortal! This planet will bend before my will and then you will see.”

“Violence is not the answer, Amora!”

She seemed to disagree, because she summoned a green ball of energy and hurled it at Thor.

“Alright, that’s it,” Sam said in Steve’s ear and then he dove, guns out.

“Sam, no!” Steve shouted, watching as Amora raised a spear of rebar and sent it skyward without even looking. The target profile was too narrow. Sam wouldn’t see it, couldn’t deflect it. It would fligh straight through him. All Steve could do was watch as Sam continued on his crash-course trajectory. There was a horrifying crunch, the ringing sound of metal meeting a hard object, and then Steve blinked disbelievingly as the rebar fell away, twisted in a rough knot.

“What the fuck?” Clint shouted on the coms, but Sam was still in dive, and Amora, confident that her magic had done its job, wasn’t paying him any mind. He hit her at over a hundred miles an hour and bore her forward and up into the sky until he could drop her. “Yeah!” Tony whooped over the coms, and Steve started to relax too until a cloud of green suddenly appeared beneath Amora, slowing her descent and eventually stopping it all together.

“You, you wretched little gnat!” she shouted, twisting in the air. Then she paused and her posture changed entirely.

“Don’t!” Sam shouted, and abruptly, Steve felt something in the air change. Beside him, Thor was on edge too.

“Oh? And why shouldn’t I?” Amora asked, her eyes intent, her hands moving restlessly, stirring sparks in the air. “Your bones will brew a thousand bottles of lightning. All I need is a little…” Her fingers snapped together and a fireball bloomed before her, angling straight for Sam.

In the brief second of panic, Steve’s mind flashed to Sam’s nightmares, his fear of the heat, him watching his partner fall in fiery wreck over Afghani airspace. Too many things happened all at once. Thor lifted off, hammer angled toward the fireball. Rhodey fired on Amora and the fireball, missiles spraying through the air. And Sam…Sam twisted and grew, somehow both a man and not a man. Thunder clapped through the air and rent the fireball into pieces, piercing it and going straight on to the Enchantress. Briefly everything was in black and white, all high and low contrast. And then time resumed its normal course and Amora fell to the earth, the pavement cracking around her heavy Asgardian body.

Sam remained hovering above them all as though nothing at all had happened, although Steve could still see the afterimage against the insides of his eyelids, huge and fierce and sharp.

“What the hell just happened?” Clint asked breathlessly. A moment later he arrived at Steve’s side, panting, a bandolier of police pistols still strapped to his chest.

“Fuck if I know,” Tony replied, stuttering down to a land on Steve’s other side.

Thor and Natasha finished fastening the Asgardian restraints on the Enchantress and then they turned as well. “Talk later, clean-up now,” Natasha said shortly, though she too was looking up at Sam, her face carefully blank in the way it often was when she was genuinely intrigued. A moment later, Sam finally touched down. His face was drawn like he was feeling ill, and he was drenched in sweat. Steve studied him for only a moment before turning to the Avengers.

“Can you guys handle clean-up without us? I think…I think Sam needs a rest. He did get blindsided by that rebar.”

“More like he blindsided it,” muttered Clint, and then he doubled over with Natasha’s elbow in his stomach.

“We can handle it, Steve. Go do what you need to do.”

Steve nodded and extended his hand to Sam, waiting patiently. Sam eyed him through liquid, blown eyes. He almost looked strung out with whatever he was feeling. But he barely hesitated before putting his hand in Steve’s and being led away from the battlefield. They climbed onto Steve’s motorcycle in silence and drove back through the streets of D.C. to Sam’s house, blowing through every red light as they went. No one was out anyway, what with the supernatural battle.

They parked and stumbled inside, Sam practically melting as the air conditioned air hit his face. With efficient hands, Steve started stripping him out of his gear. Goggles, jet pack, wing harness, wrist gauntlets, Kevlar, undershirt, weapons belt, combat boots, socks, fatigues, underwear. The moment Sam was naked, he folded to the floor, pressing his chest to the kitchen tiles. Steve shed his armful of armor on the table and crossed to the refrigerator, pulling out a handful of ice cubes and carrying them back.

“You want me to press ice on your back?”

Sam groaned and after a moment, he nodded his head. Steve knelt on the floor at Sam’s side and carefully set a line of cubes down his spine. Then he took two fingers and began rubbing the ice in one piece at a time. Sam shuddered as cold water trickled over his back and ribs, pooled at the base of his spine. Once all the ice was melted, Steve stood and got more.

He’d started in on the second ice massage before he finally said, “Are we gonna talk about this?”

After one big sigh, Sam turned his head slightly so he could see Steve from the corner of his eye. “I suppose we ought to. I…I owe you an explanation.”

“Well, you don’t owe me one, but I’d appreciate one all the same. I saw that rebar, Sam. I saw it hit you head-on. And it just…it just bent. Like a piece of wet spaghetti.”

“Sounds about right.”

Steve swallowed and moved on to the last ice cube. Before he could start rubbing it in, Sam grabbed his wrist. “Let’s, let’s get you out of some of that armor and move to the sofa before we keep going.” He stood, letting the ice fall to the floor, and helped Steve up. With fingers that still shook, he stripped Steve out of his shield holster and outer Kevlar and then led him to the living room.

They sat on the sofa, each slightly angled toward the other but not touching. The westering sun shone in through the living room window, casting everything in an bright orange glow.

“So, are you, uh, are you human?”

“What gave it away?” Sam teased, and then his face grew serious. “I’m not.”

“Have you, were you, um?”

“I’ve never been human, Steve.”

“Oh,” Steve said, blinking. What was he supposed to say to that?

“They have a few names for my kind. My mother called me ‘impundulu.’ She was human, but my father. He was like me. Humans don’t, uh, the other sides’ genes are stronger, I guess you’d say. There was no chance of my ever being human.”

“Okay,” Steve said, still unsure what to say. He could feel anger burbling somewhere inside him, and part of him wanted to unleash it. Peggy stolen from him. Sam lying to him. Really, he knew how to pick ‘em. “I still, I don’t know what that even means.”

“I’m a lightning bird.”

The anger boiled higher and higher, and then Steve’s hearing caught up to him. He chewed on the words, chewed on them more, and then abruptly laughed out loud, huge belly-shaking bellows that filled the living room. “Did you,” he gasped between fits of laughter, “did you, say, bird?”

Sam watched him with eyes both wary and just the tiniest bit hopeful as his laughter ran its course and died away. And then he said, “Man, shut the hell up.” Steve laughter returned in force, and he pressed his hands to his stomach, trying to control himself.

“I don’t mean to laugh,” Steve wheezed out, tears at the corners of his eyes, “but you’re a bird and you’re ‘the Falcon.’”

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up, why don’t you?”

The sunlight grew fainter and fainter and finally, Steve managed to look up with a straight face. “So you…you make lightning?”

“Among other things.”

“And Amora, she knew what you were?”

“I didn’t mean for her to find out, but I didn’t see the rebar coming.”

“How does that work?”

“There’s not a lot that can kill me. Sure as hell not a stupid piece of rebar. My head’s killing me, though.” Sam sighed and leaned back in the sofa, draping himself in a shape that spoke of exhaustion, rubbing his fingers against his temple. Steve studied the lines of him, trying to take the Sam he’d seen in his human form and remold him to fit a new and frightening unknown shape.

“Fire,” Steve said abruptly. Sam tensed and then nodded.

“That would be a thing that could kill me.” Steve glanced over to the empty fireplace and thought about the freezing temperatures in the house, how Sam couldn’t seem to stand even the thought of heat. He could endure it, but he clearly didn’t like to if he didn’t have to.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Sam sighed, peeking from under his hand to catch Steve’s eyes. “But there’s not a lot, actually, nobody knew. Not after Riley. It’s something I try to keep quiet. There are people out there…”

Steve immediately tensed. “Should we be expecting company?”

“Depends on if someone managed to catch footage of that and put it on the internet.”

“We’ll protect you. Me and the others. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“It’s not that simple. There are people out there who know how to control things like me, how to make us…” Sam trailed off and shuddered. There was a story here that Steve didn’t know and he had a feeling he wouldn’t be hearing it for quite some time. He let it go for the moment and leaned forward, touching Sam’s knee. That got his attention.

“We will protect you,” Steve said again, looking straight into Sam’s eyes.

After a moment, Sam smiled and looked down. “You look at a man like that, I begin to see how you single-handedly took down a Hydra base.”

“Well, not single-handedly. I had help.”

“Yeah. Bunch of trained puppies, I’m betting.” Steve squeezed Sam’s knee and immediately after became hyper away that Sam was sprawled naked over the couch like a cool drink of water on a hot day. Sam seemed aware of it, too, because he moved his hand and settled further into the sofa, face inscrutable.

“You’re okay with this?”

“No. Yes. It’s complicated,” Steve murmured, his hand sliding up Sam’s thigh a little. “I don’t like being lied to. But I can see why you did it. Especially with the way the government is eyeballing supers right now. And if there are people hunting you…” he trailed off, his hand squeezing more tightly than he intended. “But you…you gave me a purpose after everything with SHIELD. You, you took me in, you accepted me, and you didn’t expect a damn thing in return. Sam Wilson, I’m gone over you. So I’m going to be okay with it sooner or later, and the way I see it, you’re naked in front of me, so I’d better make it sooner.”

Sam’s wry smile was bright in the darkness of the living room, but he shifted a little, raising one knee invitingly. “Well, far be it for me to argue with Captain America. Now, hold on a second. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do something I haven’t done in a while. See what you think of it.” He twisted a little and tilted his head and suddenly something was different about him, an inner fire that Steve could see from the corner of his eye, but couldn’t quite catch straight on. The lines of fire folded around him like a magnetic field, and Steve felt inexorably drawn forward. Inside him, lust ignited in his veins and his cock came to full attention without even a coquettish touch from Sam.

“Oh, oh Sam,” Steve breathed, his hand sliding higher still on Sam’s thigh.

“We’re not only good at lightning,” Sam said with a satisfied smirk. “Now, how do you feel about me sucking you? Seems like the least I could do, what with the shock to the system today.”

In reply, Steve groaned, lurching forward and putting his other hand on Sam’s free thigh, bracing himself for a kiss. He nearly whimpered when Sam ducked to the side to kiss the side of his neck instead. “Let me make you feel good, Steve,” Sam murmured, his breath hot and electric on Steve’s skin.

“Yes,” Steve hissed, and found himself abruptly pushed back against the couch cushions, Sam’s hands at the fly of his combat pants. He was still in steel-toed boots, for fuck’s sake, but he could barely think past the thick, hot feeling that Sam was filling him with. Sam pulled down his pants and boxers only far enough to free his cock and then he leaned down to kiss the head, his eyes on Steve’s.

“Is this what you want?”

“Oh, god, Sam, please.”

“Look at you, so hard and ready for me. So sweet for me.” Sam kissed the head again. “You’re always so damn sweet, Steve.” The tone he said the last part with was almost tortured, almost angry, but not quite. Instead, he leaned forward and put his lips around Steve, tonguing at the edge of the head, sucking wickedly. Steve groaned and threw his head back, fingers digging into the couch cushions.

Sam pulled off and ran a nail up the underside of Steve’s cock. “Come on, baby, touch me. Put your hands on me.” Impatient for it, he grabbed Steve’s wrist and directed it to his head, pressing up into the touch for a moment before moving to lap at Steve’s balls. Powerless before the onslaught of hot, wet lust, Steve’s fingers clenched as best they could in Sam’s hair, tugging lightly.

“That’s right,” Sam murmured and shifted back, taking his lips down Steve’s cock again. He pulled off to say, “Come apart for me, Steve,” and then descended, sucking and stroking at a frenzied pace.

From the corner of his eye, Steve could still see those lines waving and converging on Sam, Sam the center of his world, Sam’s mouth the axis on which Steve’s world turned. One sharp twist of Sam’s wrist was all it took. Steve came. And came and came and came. Long after Sam pulled off, licking the last of Steve’s come from his lips, Steve’s stomach still convulsed and his cock still quivered in the throes of orgasm. “Jesus,” he breathed over and over again, one hand locked around Sam’s wrist, the other clutching desperately at the armrest above him.

“That’s right,” Sam murmured, watching through his lashes with dark satisfaction. He jerked himself as he watched Steve, but through the haze of orgasm, Steve thought it almost looked perfunctory. It wasn’t the touch on his cock that was getting Sam off. “You’re so beautiful Steve. You’re like the sun after a storm, and here you are just spread out for me, mine, willing to be mine, willing to have me. Come for me, Steve. Show me.”

Steve moaned and twisted on the sofa, trying to hide his face. It was too much: the way his balls still twisted with lust, Sam’s gaze, the chill of the apartment pebbling his nipples. It was all too much. A moment later, Sam grunted and Steve felt seed hit his stomach and he convulsed again, pleasure a hot wire down his spine. And then, abruptly, it was over. Steve’s body went boneless in the haze of afterglow and above him, Sam sighed and leaned back, hand still loosely gripping his cock.

“Haven’t done that in a long time,” he finally said. “Felt good.”

It seemed ages before Steve was finally able to compose his sex-scrambled brains enough to form any coherent response. “Lightning bird?” he wheezed, cracking his eyes to watch Sam’s face.

“Well, I did say that wasn’t all we could do.” Sam grinned and slowly collapsed down on top of Steve.

“Next you’ll tell me your come is the fountain of youth or something.”

“Uh, well, probably not my come.”

Steve blinked and peered down at Sam’s head, grunting inquiringly. Sam twisted so he could look Steve in the eyes and said, “Let’s just say you were never cradle-robbing or anything with me. In fact, I’d hazard to say I’m the cradle-robber here.” His face as he spoke was half-apologetic, half-afraid.

“Do I even want to know?” Steve asked, running his fingers down Sam’s spine.

“Honestly, babe, probably not.” He watched Steve, waiting for this to be the moment in which Steve decided it was too much after all. But it didn’t come. Instead, Steve smiled and pinched Sam’s ass.

“Fair enough. I’ll just have to guess.”

“Oh my god, you’re impossible.”

“Just stubborn, Sam. Just stubborn.”

**Author's Note:**

> All of my info on the impundulu is taken from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt, but a few of the elements I used are: lightning generation, appears as a black and white giant bird or bird/man hybrid, is immortal and can only be killed by fire, can be forced into servitude by witches, and sometimes appears as a beautiful young man who seduces girls (or in this case, Steve.) I have kind of a whole backstory in my head about Sam's life up to this point, but there was no way to get it into the story without shoehorning a ton of exposition. Suffice it to say that Sam is _really_ old and that he's had some really bad experiences with fire, which is why he's abnormally sensitive to heat, even for an impundulu.


End file.
